Stunt community expresses outrage over Uma Thurman's Kill Bill crash

Since Uma Thurman revealed how she was talked into performing a stunt she was uncomfortable taking on in the movie Kill Bill Vol. 1 – which resulted in a serious car crash – there has been much finger pointing over who is to blame.

Thurman has said that she holds the movie’s producers Lawrence Bender, E. Bennett Walsh and Harvey Weinstein responsible, and has claimed that they tried to cover up the accident.

Now the stunt community has weighed in on the matter, as well as the Screen Actors Guild, to which Thurman belongs.

“The situation as it has been described sounds like a stunt and would be a likely safety violation,” a spokesperson for SAG-AFTRA told The Hollywood Reporter.

“In general, only stunt professionals should perform stunts with guidance from a stunt coordinator to ensure a correct and safe performance.”

Thurman called the car ‘a deathbox’ in an interview with The New York Times, and said that Tarantino talked her into the stunt, which culminated in her hitting a tree.

With no shoulder belts or headrests, Thurman suffered concussion and injured her knees.

Tarantino has since spoken of his sorrow over the incident, calling it ‘the biggest regret of my life’.

“The stuff that went on is appalling,” veteran stunt performer and coordinator Andy Armstrong added to THR.

“That could have been a death by decapitation. The car could easily have rolled over [or] the camera could have flown forward. It was irresponsibility on a mega level.”

Armstrong added that having spoken to Keith Adams, the stunt coordinator on the movie, he was told that Adams was instructed to ‘stay in his hotel that day’.

Another industry veteran, Melissa Stubbs, told THR that even if Thurman agreed to do it, it was not her responsibility to have to say no.